Our trip to Australia began around lunchtime on Saturday, May 18, 2019. We had scheduled a pickup with United Taxi at 12:15, and the driver arrived at our house several minutes early. We had finished packing the night before, so we were ready and waiting to go. We got into the cab and had an uneventful drive to Pearson. The first leg of our trip was on Air Canada, so the cab dropped us off at the Terminal 1 US area and we proceeded to the US check-in counter. We had checked in the evening before, and used the kiosks to print boarding passes, however had to line up and wait to speak with an agent in order to get our luggage tags. The line wasn’t very long, and when we got to speak with an agent we discovered that they simply had to confirm that our Australian visas had been properly processed. Once she was able to confirm everything was in order we were good to go.
The security and customs lines were incredibly short, and we had lots of time once we were in the secure part of the terminal ahead of boarding. We had a late lunch at Walburgers, then paced around the terminal before boarding. The boarding process began on time, and being in Zone 2 we were on the plane quickly. It was an uneventful flight, though it did take off a bit late. There was some pretty solid in-flight entertainment options - I watched First Man, the Neil Armstrong documentary, which I quite enjoyed. Once that film was over I watched another movie, Tag, which was also alright but pretty mindless. There was not a ton of time left on the flight once I finished watching Tag, so I watched as episode of Brooklyn 99 while the plane descended and landed at LAX.
AC759 prior to takeoff
Mountains on the way to LA
We had an easy connection in LAX. We arrived in Terminal 6, and luckily there was no need to go through security again. We were able to walk from Terminal 6 right through to Terminal B, the International Terminal, in about 10 minutes. The route to get from Terminal 6 to Terminal B required that we walk through two long tunnels and one passenger bridge, however the route was well-marked. When we arrived the international terminal was fairly quiet. We had a few hours before our connection, and so we decided to walk the terminal from end to end to stretch our legs and kill some time. It was neat to see all the international carriers and their planes lined up at the gates, ready to fly across the Pacific to China, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. We had a quick dinner at Starbucks, and then continued our wandering. We knew our upcoming flight was going be long, and didn’t want to sit too much before takeoff.
Shortly before our scheduled boarding time we made our way to the Qantas gate for our flight. On schedule, the boarding process for QF12, an Airbus A380, began, and it proceeded quickly and uneventfully. We were in Row 68, which sounds like it should be at the back of the plane, but due to the size of the A380 we were actually overwing. The flight ended up pushing back about an hour late due to an updated weather forecast in Sydney that was calling for fog. As the captain explained it, this fog may delay the landing and would necessitate that the plane have additional fuel, which also required they remove some cargo so the plane would not be overweight. They ended up sorting it out, and we took off smoothly. Once we were in the air the flight was very uneventful. We almost got missed by the cabin crew as they were serving dinner, however Todd noticed that everyone else had been served was able to flag a flight attendant down and let them know they had forgotten us. We spent about 10 hours dozing off and on - the lights in the cabin were kept dimmed for the majority of the flight which made sleep easy to find. I woke up shortly before the cabin crew began serving breakfast and began watching Captain America - Winter Soldier. I finished the film while we were eating breakfast, and then spent the remainder of the flight reading.
QF12 (an A380 named David Warren) at the gate at LAX
We had a smooth and fog-free landing, about an hour later than scheduled. We disembarked from the plane quickly - even though the plane was massive their boarding and disembarking procedures kept things moving very efficiently. We cleared customs and immigration with no issues, and found ourselves in the Sydney terminal around 8:30. It was a bit later than expected due to the delay in LAX, but it was a beautiful morning.